Life's Illusions

But now it’s just another show, you leave them laughing when you go and if you care, don’t let them know. Don’t give yourself away… 

 Sometimes I wonder how I will die. 

It isn’t a fantasy so much as a prophecy I’m driven to fulfill. Drifting away with old age has never felt right. The universe has tagged me to be the last one standing as I’ve watched so many others fall. Hard as it is on me, I see my dad, the oldest of 11, methodically losing his siblings, and his son just months ago, his wife some weeks later, and friends upon friends upon friends. He appears to take I in stride but he’s a quiet type mostly, not one to carry on about losing any fight. Keep on keepin’ on is his philosophy. It wasn’t until this past year that his cracks have shown. 

It’s been said that our birthdays aren’t measured by the years, but by the events that fall between them. My life is a different one than a year ago. Sure, we change all the time before we realize it, and we wonder how that extra candle got there on the cake in just one day, but it wasn’t a day; it was an entire trip around a giant blazing ball. 

 

Time is a conundrum, isn’t it? 

It was only last December that I had to tell him that his son, the best of his friends, was gone. It was as if I’d punched him right in the pit of his belly. Just eight months but so long ago. I took that responsibility from the officers because they didn’t know him, or any of us. My brother was dead, a bullet from his own gun on that drizzled morning. I couldn’t let strangers have that moment, it belonged to us.

Sonny took control of his end. I don’t have it in me, though there’ve been days I’ve pleaded with the universe to take me out of the game, but those stars have other plans and no amount of begging brings a bargain. They like to toss me over a cliff but with some sort of cosmic bungee cord that pulls me back with a heavy snap. 

I once asked the question, “What is it like to live inside of a birthday cake? Does glitter tumble to the floor like a million little rainbows? Would horns blare at me each time I walked in?” Now I am compelled to ask what happens when the party’s over? Is there a heaven, and is it billows and clouds, or glitter and confetti? Are there ice cream castles and feather canyons everywhere? Does gravity not exist in such places? Because in my world, confetti falls to the ground just like our memories and hopes and expectations do. Glitter is nothing in the darkness. When we go, it’s ashes or it’s a box, and if we are fortunate, we leave behind some sort of proof that we lived. 

By all indications of my life, I’m inclined to believe I’ll meet my end in a fiery fashion, perhaps rumbling down the road, faster than I should be, and Death will blindside me. These are the themes of my story; lots of drama to make headlines. Mostly, I wonder what song will be my last. Sometimes I set aside songs in my head, like I’m creating a playlist. The ultimate and final mix tape. 

Such thoughts are lonely ones. I don’t know what was in my brother’s head when he pulled that trigger. I’d give anything to know because one last thought could give so many answers, It’s why I’m always writing mine down, so nobody will ever have to wonder. He is an event that happened between my birthdays, one I can’t let go of despite our differences and distances. He lingers like a lone candle in all of our lives. Dad turned 82 last week, my turn to age arrives in just 9 minutes. I’ll be a year older by the time I’ve written the last word of this and a day older than that when I read it to you. Like a festive cake with one slice missing, there is a palpable dissonance in the air. 

I could say that Sonny’s death was the most important thing, but it isn’t. Despite all of the madness with the obliteration of my family, I’ve at last found freedom, and I’ve learned that being free always comes at the cost of others. I’ve wished fervently to die before my husband, and even befpre my dad. Selfish, yes, but the thought of such loss haunts me. My brother took my wish to his grave, because now I have to hold on. I will not reach for that freedom at the cost of my father’s heart. 

Lessons never cut deep enough until we’ve seen both sides of them. 

The thing about confetti and clouds is that in the drifting time, they carry the best of us; our memories and our hopes. It’s the expectations that fall, and that’s okay because without expectation, it’s harder to fail. We need to cling to the mist and move forward until our moment comes to rest. 

My life is a different one than just a year ago.

A Hundred Tears Away

Go ahead and cry now, just give in to the madness.  The only way to feel your joy is first to feel the sadness…

It’s that time of year again.  The first page on the calendar that prompts us to climb our unresolved mountains before we come sliding back down at our self-imposed December deadline.  I’ve never been into resolutions, yet never work well without a finite date to loom over me.

Having stumbled past the ultimate deadline that I thought Destiny had placed on me, I’m in a bit of a free fall at the moment.  We’ve all been posed the philosophical question “How would you spend your time if you knew when you were going to die?”  Been there, spent the time as wisely as I thought best.  I lived every emotion; joy, sadness, laughter and melancholy.  I’ve cried a hundred tears, a hundred thousand times.  It turned out to be some sort of twisted cosmic joke when I didn’t die as prophesized.  Either I had misread the roadmap or Destiny moved the finish line on me.

Am I to find the answer at the top of my mountain?  Because here at ground level, the question remained – where do I go from here?

I felt that death would be a gift; an ending to a life that had gone on too long.  I was tired.  I still feel twinges of it some days.  People ask me how I’m doing and when I respond with “okay,” they almost always return with “just okay?”  They don’t understand – “okay” means I’m not having that twinge.  It’s funny how we can see negatives and positives so differently from one another.

There are things in our lives that we have different names for but they all amount to the same; gifts, blessings, good luck or fortunes.  What many consider to be a blessing would be a sunny day.  For me, that would be a curse because of severe and rare health risks. To everyone else, Kryptonite is just a pretty green glowing crystal. 

It’s all about perception. 

I’ve always known I was different from most.  I have been the outsider to my own life, feeling the need to justify or defend my existence and its variables.  It was a linear way to the top of my mountain.  What I have learned to be my footholds are things intangible.  Love as it means to me, the meaning of life and my purpose in its evolution.  I say that I’m in a freefall, but it only feels that way because my deadline is no longer as obvious as the summit above me.  Where challenges and chaos have defined my path, I now feel there is reason.  It no longer has to be justified to anyone.  It only needs to make sense to me. 

Living each day as a lifetime is often a fleeting thing that falls away with the drudgery of an obligated existence.  Not for me; it is in me all of the time.  It’s a lot to carry, but and because the weight is not mine alone.  There have always been lessons, but over time the consequences weigh more.  While my life has always felt like I was climbing to nowhere, suddenly I understood that I’ll never get anywhere if I continue to carry so much dead weight.  The hard part has been figuring what or who am I going to need later and what is best to cut loose now? 

My friends have always been the most significant treasures.  They made up for the family I wanted little part of.  They’ve all had their place and time, though it’s taken me a long time to realize that.  Not everything is meant to last, and that includes relationships.  We think loyalty is defined by forever and feel betrayed when everlasting comes to an end, but we aren’t replacing the people in our journey, we are replenishing our souls. 

In the past calendar run, I have been called many things from bitter and spiteful to kindhearted and a superhero.  I’ve been advised way more than I am comfortable with.  I’m quite surprised I still have a tongue left after having bitten it so often.  In conversation with someone last month, I alluded to a 25-year friendship that I’d severed last summer and he asked quietly, “do you have any friends you haven’t had a falling out with?”  I was hurt by that because it proved he wasn’t understanding things I’d been saying, which had become the common theme with most of my friends, hence the falling outs.  It has become important to me to stop giving more to everyone than I was getting in return.  And it isn’t a quid pro quo thing.  It’s a harsh learning that I am not a superhero, and that I am vulnerable. 

It’s still a long way to the top, and Kryptonite hides in the darkest of places.

Someone asked me today “why is every story so negative?”  Stuart was laughing as he asked, but there was a nugget of truth.  I was starting to tell him a story and finished with “See?  It’s not negative, it’s interesting. And if I were on a stage telling it, it would be comedy gold.”  In the same conversation, he commiserated about my physical disabilities and conveyed a brief sadness when he asked “Have you ever looked death in the face?” and I said that I had.  “You’ve had a lot of challenge in your life.”  That’s okay, I said.  It’s given me a different point of view.

Life is all about perception. 

It’s not so much about having survived my life.  It’s the view that it’s given me.  Have you ever stood at the top of the world and looked up at a clear night sky?  Not all peaks are found at the top of a mountain.  Sometimes they are on a sandy beach, an isolated field of dry grass, in a clearing or at the top of a city hill. 

I may be falling free, but that landing is just a hundred tears away.

Sometimes we want to give up but fools like us, we keep trying.  You’re a long way from someplace you feel safe but peace of mind, it comes from just one place…

How I Turned 46

Celebrating an anniversary of my life was a daunting prospect when a month prior my doctor had put me at death’s door.  Many handed me the gift-wrapped rhetoric of “you’ve survived!” and “this year will be better!”  I have learned to smile politely and say the things that people are looking to hear.  

There are some things I have learned since blowing out the candles of my last birthday cake.  I’ve learned how to die with both fear and grace.  I have found my old sense of humor that had seemingly gone astray.  I have realized the best thing I can do at times is to not say anything at all.

And I have at last found my worth.

People always ask “why do you write?” and I never have a fully formed answer.  I’ve often felt inferior in the face of other writers who have glorious imaginations or intense passions for the written word.  For me, it’s always been about having a conversation with myself.  More recently, I’ve been working on a series of short fiction stories that tie in with my music obsession.  But you see, I’m a writer of little imagination.  Too often I am grounded in reality and despite the dark clouds that hover over me, I rather like it that way.  Telling the very real tales that are universal yet uniquely different – it leaves me feeling that I have a place in what is a very large world.  

Of course, it’s easy to delude myself into thinking that what I’m doing, I’m doing very well.  I believe people when they tell me as much, but I almost wish that just once someone would tell me I’m terrible at what I do and that I should drop my pen before I truly poison someone with it.  Perhaps then I’d feel as though I’ve arrived.  

It came about that this year on my 46^th birthday, I would be spending it in the company of two women, one whom I admired very much and the other who was more well known in the literary world than I’ll ever be.  I was to be presenting them at a lecture later in the evening.  Being an extremely shy person by nature, I spent weeks wondering what would I talk to these two authors about.  Being a bestseller?  Writing award-winning work?  Having my words acted out before thousands?  That’s all about them, not about me.  I wanted to ask advice, to walk away with more knowledge and instead, I walked away with an experience that held a magic I hadn’t expected.

I’ve met many celebrities in my time.  Some pretty impressive names.  This evening, however, on the 9^thday of August, I did not have dinner with two well known authors.  I shared a meal with two best friends who welcomed me into their world for an evening.  They laughed and displayed a familiarity with each other that I envied.  I’ve lost many friends as of late and being on the fringes of such a relationship made me miss having that in my own life.  

Victoria and Anne have only known each other for just a few years but sometimes instant connections quickly make up for a lifetime.  They mothered over me as I picked at my macaroni and cheese, but I was more interested in the conversation swirling around me.  They talked of how they’d met, chuckled over shopping excursions, told of how they collaborated and didn’t hold back on each other’s bad habits.  There was no pretense, no politeness, only an authentic affection for each other and even for me too.  Victoria has enchanted me from the time we first met with her talent and energy.  As I spoke to them both, I related my own stories of edits and creations and inspiration.  Then we talked of personal issues such as family and childhoods the state of the nation today.  I was privy to not only what made these two women successful, but what made them human. While our experiences were different from each other’s, there was a universal bond and I thought, I belong here.

And I felt my worth.  

It was at the end when the birthday brownie arrived at the table, complete with a candle to make a wish on, that I truly sensed a kinship.  They could have simply said “Happy birthday” upon learning of the day, but Anne and Victoria took the extra step to make it special.  Such a simple act left this old girl still believing that good does exist in this war-torn world.  

These are the gifts that need no pretty paper or bright bows.  These are the gifts that cannot be bought because time can’t be found in any store.  It’s not what others can do for me, it’s learning what I have to offer of myself.